Premier Brad Wall took some time off from his feud with A&W to do something else last week. Instead of fighting rogue hamburger chains, he has asked some MLAs to take a look at rising crime rates in the province.

Lawlessness is on the rise in almost every way, from drinking and driving to domestic violence to break and enters and even murders. Saskatchewan has a problem.

Wall’s committee consists of Saskatchewan Party MLAs Herb Cox, Jennifer Campeau. Lori Carr, Terry Dennis, Mark Docherty, Larry Doke and Doug Steele. Alberta has used such committees in the past to do some excellent work. The difference is that Alberta traditionally has give these committees a much broader mandate.

When the committee was announced, its mandate was to study issues such as “rising property crime rates in rural areas, police presence in rural areas and an increase in guns, gang activity and highly addictive and dangerous drugs such as fentanyl in urban centres.”

Given the outline of its mandate, the committee seems to be a public relations exercise. The blame and solution will be about RCMP policing levels in rural communities, and drug use and gangs in the cities. I am not sure why the premier even bothered to strike the committee.

If the government is serious about reducing crime, it needs to look at a wide variety of factors that include the number of Mounties in Saskatchewan as well as its own policies in the areas of job creation, social services funding, upcoming health cuts, and the reduction of services that help persons with chronic addictions and the struggles with homelessness.

The government also needs to look at more cost effective solutions then what’s in use now. Long term housing of chronically homeless persons through Housing First is far less expensive than the use of shelter beds. But those shelter beds are less expensive than hospitalization or imprisonment. Yet, it’s often hospitals and prisons all that are left after the cuts.

For a government that loves the phrase “investing in infrastructure,” investments in affordable housing and solutions for struggling people could go a long way toward reducing crime and social service costs in Saskatchewan. It should not be a surprise that people who have affordable and secure housing with the supports they need are far less likely to commit crime than those that don’t.

It’s not just housing that provides some answers. Food security is a big issue as well. Wall’s committee may want to stop by the Saskatoon Food Bank and Learning Centre to find out why people are falling behind and why food bank use has increased so much. The 2016 Annual Report of the Saskatoon Food Bank shows that it helped a staggering 215,895 individuals last year.

Studies show that it isn’t a lack of financial knowledge that kept people using the food bank; it was that they were struggling to live day to day while working or living on government benefits that pay far less than what they need to survive.

Food banks aren’t a solution but an emergency stopgap measure that serves as a warning sign of a much larger problem in our communities: that people can’t meet their most basic needs. At that point, some of these people are going to think: “What do I have to lose by selling some drugs or doing a break and enter?”

Instead of looking just at drugs as the problem, why not look at housing costs, the minimum wage, social services funding, conditions on reserves, policing models and even alcohol use? We know the reason why the government is reluctant. All those issues would shine a bright light on some long-standing failures of government policies toward those who earn the least in our province.

It’s predictable that the committee will call for more police officers and integrated operations with municipal police services and the RCMP. That may provide immediate political gain, but to actually reduce crime, we need to look at problems and solutions that are much more complicated and costly than policing.

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